The Ruins
by LeBestCrossOverFan
Summary: An unnamed archaeologist stumbles into the ancient ruins of a lost people. Lost and confused, a mysterious voice emerges from the dark to enlighten our hero in order to get Carl Kassel's voice on his home answering machine.
1. Chapter 1

"Where am I?" intoned the frightened archaeologist, his vision impaired to total blindness, "why can't I see? Is anyone there?"

The archaeologist had been tasked with heading an expedition to the ancient ruins of a once great empire; remains of a civilization that was sprawling and massive, and yet so small—its creators could only see growth through expansion. The archaeologist was alone here, his colleagues having perished in the complex's impenetrable traps. Somehow, our hero survived. He fumbled helplessly in the dark hoping to find his flashlight. He grabbed a section of the wall to pull himself up when he heard the wall shift under his bodyweight.

Suddenly, a rumble shook the ground, debris fell from all around, and a single ray of sunlight from the clear sky above shot through the ancient stone and ruin, illuminating a small recessed glass dome, the light glinting off of the ancient crystal like the light from a distant star.

"We are here" boomed a voice out of the deep and dark gloom. The voice seemed heavy and confident, loud and proud, and gurgled with a rolling rasp like a person who had years of tobacco filtered into their lungs. It had an inhuman quality to it; as the voice spoke, the room seemed to hum and click with a new cacophony of sounds.

The archaeologist was baffled and flabbergasted; he was not expecting this.

"Wh- who are you?" asked the archaeologist, "be you friend or foe?"

"We are friend to all" the voice boomed in return. The room filled with the sounds of humming and chimes, "We are the alpha and omega and all matter in between. So long as you have made a contribution to your local NPR station, we will continue to service you as well." There was a momentary pause in the voice—it seemed to be thinking, plotting, calculating.

The voice boomed once more: "Please identify yourself, caller; we are on the air".

The archaeologist stuttered in thought, what is going on? Why hadn't the previous expeditions mentioned this entity? He remembered the voice's request: "Er, Dr. Parnsley Speck". This was not his name, but in his excitement and confusion, the archaeologist forgot his name.

"Good to have you on Parnsley," exclaimed the voice, its voice changing in ways inperceptible, "Okay Carl, who will Parnsley be playing for tonight?" The voice once again shifted, becoming deeper and slightly slower, "Dr. Speck will be playing for Amanda Sothers from Indianapolis." The voice changed back, "Okay then, Parns-" The voice was cut off.

The archaeologist stood up in the dusty room. What was the voice? Where did it come from? Why was it here? What was its purpose? He searched the room in hopes to find what triggered the voice but to no avail. Whatever it was, it was now extinguished forever.


	2. Chapter 2

The archaeologist sat down in the musty chamber; the sunlight had begun to fade away and he knew that there would be little chance of his own personal survival in the dank dark recesses of the ruins. Sitting on the ancient, millennia old, stone floor, the archaeologist shifted uncomfortably and thought about his life choices and how he would miss his brood, his family, his mate, and most of all, living, but then all of a sudden, the ground shifted too, as if it too were uncomfortable with the man sitting in his lonesome in the tomb.

The archaeolosist stumbled to his feet, but it was too late, the floor beneath him crumbled away like one would expect from millennia old stone ruins, and the archaeologist was swallowed up by the dark like a worm in the maw of an immense rocky fish.

"Well, this is the end for me I suppose," groaned the archaeologist to himself.

He tried to shut his eyes, but the dust from the crumbled rock floor made his eyelids resist and stay agape. Soon, the archaeologist found that he could no longer see anything—the world around him was dark as pitch and as quiet as the empty tomb he had fallen through.

But alas! A handful of lights glinted before him from all around him, star-like in appearance, twinkling with celestial light. The archaeologist tried to clean the debris from his sore eyes to get a better look at his surroundings.

"Am I… dead…?" he asked himself. The archaeologist did not believe in an afterlife, but could not think of any other possibility; the lights were shimmering so beautifully that they mist have been a gift from the gods above.

Suddenly, sounds erupted from all around him; sounds of all shapes and colors. The archaeologist was startled by the cacophony, the orchestra of raqueterring, the chorus of noise, the quartet of cacophony! But the archaeologist soon realized that the noises were not just meaningless fuzz, they were voices—hundreds of voices, human perhaps? He could not say. He squinted to try to get a better grip on what the voices were saying:

"Lisssssssttt- ooo- Radio La- a- a- a-" one voice intoned. Another voice said some sounds, but time had garbled them too beyond comprehension.

"Dub- dub- bul- youuuu- en-" a voice shrieked from the starlight.

"Anj En Pi Arh" concluded a voice from a distance with a tone of finality.

The archaeologist could not understand what the voices were telling him. He was confounded, confused, baffled, bamboozled, and he couldn't move on from that.

"What could it possibly mean?" the archaeologist asked himself aloud.

The new silence was quickly pierced again by a new voice.

"He- e- e- low I'm Ja- a- a- ad Abumraaaaaaaaad" the voice proclaimed. Suddenly a second voice followed,

"And I- I- I- I'm Ro- o- o- o- o- ber-" the voice was punctuated by a piercing static, then resumed. "Kr- ul- ul- ul- ul- wich" finished the voice.

The first voice spoke anew: "And too- oo- day we- e- e- e- are go- ing- ing- ing- to talk abou- ou- ou- out each other- er- er- er-."

"B- b- but Jad-d-d, we- e- e- e- e- can't do tha- at. We ne- e- e- e- ed to stay proooo- fesh- sh- sh- unal."

"I- I- I- know bu- bu- but I need you- ou- ou. I lo- lo- love you Rob- ob- ob- ie."

The second voice did not respond. The archaeologist could only hear a deep heaving sound, like a bellows fanning a bonfire on a cool summer's night by the glisterning sea, and a high pitched sound akin to the quenching of ember-red irons in a cold bath. Then silence again.

Suddenly, from the abyss, an old voice returned, one of the voices from the chamber where the archaeologist was originally sat. its voice boomed in the expanse of the nothingness:

"Today, Jad will be playing for Robert Krulwich of New York City, New York for my voice on his home answering machine and for his heart."

The voice changed as it had done before:

"Okay Jad, so you will need twelve points in order to beat Paula Poundstone's score and to win Robert's heart. Are you ready?"

"Ye- e- es" said the "Jad" voice.

"St- st- st- op!", the "Robert" voice cried out from the darkness, "You don't- t- t- t- need to to to to to prove it to meeeee. I lo- lo- lo- love youuu. I nee- ee- ee- eed you- ou- our touch."

The archaeologist could not understand what was happening. The entire day had been a strange ordeal, and now he was left more confused than before. The archaeologist closed his eyes against the winds of gravity and tried to dream of home.


End file.
